Several weeks before we headed off on our trip last year, I wrote up a FAQ article about our travel plans. It has remained a pretty popular page on this site, probably because folks researching RVing assume the article will include valuable information about traveling in an RV full time. Of course, my post discusses things like the Tower of Terror and MacGyver, so it’s probably not all that helpful, but sometimes people need to learn things the hard way.

Anyway, it occurred to me as we visited the homeland of Virginia last week, that we were fielding a lot of really interesting questions, and actually being able to answer those questions made me realize just how much we’ve figured out over these past ten months. Many of these questions were things we once wondered or worried about ourselves, so I figured it might be helpful to answer them here.

Of course, a lot of the inquiries were personal to us, but I’ll include several of them here since they may be of interest to some of our friends and family.

How are you really doing??

We are really, truly, honestly, having a great time. Ever since we hit the road for real, it’s been smooth sailing. Over time we’ve figured out how fast we want to move, what kinds of places we want to visit, and what we value in campgrounds. We’ve had an awesome time meeting up with old friends around the country and we’ve met tons of super nice people on the road. While this lifestyle is not without its challenges, overall, it’s been a really good experience.

Kevin and Dixie walking through a field
It’s hard to complain when every week brings new trails to explore….

How many miles have you traveled?

Barney’s current mileage is 6,784 (which includes about 1,000 miles from before we actually started traveling full time). Our mileage is not nearly as much as one might expect, and it’s a LOT less than some of our fellow full time travelers. We have one set of Instagram friends who recently posted that they’d traveled to 42 states and put on 23,000 miles in SEVEN months. They said they typically moved every other day. Just thinking about that kind of pace makes me want to take a nap. Our situation is just very different. First, we have no particular timeline for this project, so we’re not trying to stick to a particular schedule (for example, 48 states in 12 or 24 months); second, we got stuck in Massachusetts for 3 months which significantly reduced our mileage; and third, we never intended to travel quickly. Indeed, if you look back at that old FAQ article, you’ll see, “not rush[ing] around” was one of our priorities from the beginning. So what we’ve been doing has worked for us, but we are, unquestionably, outliers.

An RV sticker map with 14 states visited
A comparatively paltry number of states visited… but everyone travels at their own pace, and this has worked well for us.

What’s been your favorite place?

This is a tough question to answer because there are several places we’ve truly enjoyed. New Orleans, Austin, and Nashville were fantastic small cities with awesome live music scenes; we were blown away by the gorgeous beaches on the Florida panhandle; and Lexington and Savannah were stunning in completely different ways. Yeah, I can’t answer this one….

Sunset at Folly Beach, South Carolina
Folly Beach near Charleston, South Carolina was one of our favorite finds….
New Orleans street corner at dusk.
But we had a blast in New Orleans…. We can’t really say either one was better than the other. They were both wonderful places to visit.

How hard was the transition from house to tiny home?

Honestly, the transition was shockingly easy. At some point when we were living in our old house, we realized we were really only using about one third of our 1100 square feet (which was comparatively small to begin with). We had a dining room table that had seating for six, but 95% of the time, it was just the two of us sitting down to eat. Now, we have a dining room table that seats two. Our house had two and a half bathrooms, but we never used the second full bathroom. Now we have one and a half bathrooms and it’s perfect. Dixie had two large beds and a huge crate, but usually slept on the sofa. Now she has one large bed, and she still sleeps on the sofa. We used to have three feet of space on each side of our bed. Now, we have a couple inches. But we sleep just as well. With Barney, we use all our space, all the time. There’s no waste and we really don’t miss the extra room.

Kitchen in Tiffin Allegro 36LA
Our kitchen is half the size of our old one, but we still make the same types of food.

What do you miss most?

There’s a certain amount of comfort and ease that you lose with this lifestyle and we definitely miss that at times. There’s comfort in knowing that if you have a problem, you have a list of friends who live nearby you can call on for help. There’s ease in knowing where things are and how to get from Point A to Point B in your hometown. When you’re living on the road, all of that is gone. We were incredibly fortunate to be near family when I got hurt. Had that happened in Arkansas or Louisiana, the situation would have been exponentially more difficult.

As for the “ease” part, most of it is really minor, but after a couple months you do start to notice the simple things you once took for granted. When you travel full time, every time you get in the car, you have to fire up the GPS because you never know where anything is, every grocery store is a mystery, every trip to get your hair cut is a ‘cross your fingers and hope for the best’ moment, every time you want to get your mail forwarded, you need to figure out where you can have it sent (not all campgrounds accept packages) and make sure you’re going to be there when it arrives. (If your pile of mail shows up the day after you left, that’s not good.) Most of the time it’s all ‘part of the adventure,’ but sometimes you just want to know where the damn mustard is without having to walk up and down 9 aisles.

A grocery store display of tomatoes

Do you miss working?

Nope.

Seriously?

Fine. We miss the conversations we used to have with our colleagues about complex issues and working with really smart people to come up with strategies to address… yeah, no. We don’t miss it.

Do you miss your old social life?

We don’t miss it per se, but we definitely recognize that our social life is very different now. One thing you realize when you’re on the move all the time is it’s easy to ‘make friends,’ but it’s hard to ‘build relationships.’ We’ve met lots of great people out on the road, and the one thing we think over and over is: ‘We would be really close friends with those folks if we lived in the same place.’ But that ‘if’ is a big issue. You can only bond so much with people over a couple days. No matter how awesome they may be, strong relationships usually take time to build. And that’s something you simply don’t have when everyone is constantly driving off in different directions.

The flip side is, in our old life, we hardly ever met anyone new. Our friends were our friends and we didn’t have the time nor the inclination to meet new people. Now, we have every reason to be social and we talk to more strangers than we ever have before. It’s made our daily lives a lot more interesting and it’s given us strong incentives to keep track of our new friends and find ways to spend more time together.

We’ve got plans to hang out with Jen and Deas (the “Nealysonwheels”) again for a month next spring (God help our livers) and if all goes well, we’ll be meeting up with Celena and Shoam (the “Busycampers”) in New England this summer.

How do you and Kevin spend so much time together and not kill each other?

Beats the hell out of me. We are always together and we always get along. I don’t know why it works so well. It just does. I’m sure ‘relationship experts’ would tell us we’re doing it all wrong, but we’re happy and neither of us are interested in messing with a system that seems to be working just fine.

How long are you going to travel?

Given what we’ve done so far, and given how big the U.S. is, I can’t imagine doing this less than another two years. Of course, anything can happen, but this country is huge and we like to travel slow and take our time checking places out. So, the absolute minimum is another two years.

Where are you headed next?

We’ll be spending a couple weeks in New England before crossing the border into Canada. We’ll then spend the remainder of the summer touring the Maritimes (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, & Prince Edward Island) before returning to the U.S. Unfortunately for him, Kevin is not nearly as excited about stalking Canada’s dreamy Prime Minister as I am, but I make the travel plans, so six weeks in Canada it is!!

I am hypnotizing you with hotness.

How is your leg doing?

All things considered, it’s pretty good. I still struggle with certain things (squatting down, lots of stairs), but it has improved a lot. I haven’t tried really stressing it – like doing difficult hikes involving scrambling- because the bone won’t be fully healed until the 1 year mark and I am not about to create a setback for myself. I have good days and bad days with regard to discomfort, but that is what it is.

How is Dixie doing?

Really really well. We were seriously concerned about how she would adapt to all this, but she’s been a champ. When we’re driving, she’ll curl up in front of the passenger seat and go to sleep, and when we’re parked, she’s content to be underfoot 95% of the time. She can relax knowing she has eyes on us at all times and she only has to monitor one door. And best of all, she gets a lot more attention and exercise than she used to get when we were at work all day and exhausted every night.

As you can see, Dixie has a very rough life these days.

The biggest issue we’ve been having with her is that as she gotten older, she’s started to develop arthritis and it’s becoming more difficult for her to make it up the very steep stairs into our RV. She can do it, but she sometimes hesitates and has to start over, making her even more hesitant the next time. We’re going to be trying some new joint supplements her vet told us about and we got a prescription for Rimadyl, which is a doggie anti-inflammatory – that should help with her pain. If we can just keep her discomfort down and her confidence up, she should be ok.

How do you guys not weigh 4,000 pounds?  All you do is eat.

Au contraire! While I post a lot of food pictures on this blog, those are really the highlights. The majority of the time, we make our meals and eat at home, and we generally eat pretty healthy foods. So when we do go out and eat fried chicken, it’s not the end of the world.

A pan of crawfish etouffee
We got fresh crawfish in New Orleans which Kevin used to make crawfish etouffee…. Delish!

How often do you have to handle the tanks?

Assuming we have full hook ups, we dump our gray water (sink and shower drain water) every couple of days (even if we have a sewer connection, we leave our gray tank closed and dump it all at once in the interests of not letting crud build up on the inside of the tank).  If we don’t have full hook ups (which is something that often happens at state and county parks), we can limit our water usage and go as long as five or six days, if we need to. As for the black tank (toilet), we can go at least a week, usually 10 days.  It just depends how much we are home.

Is that terrible?

Nah. Just like changing a baby’s diapers or picking up after your dog, you get used to it and it’s not a big deal. (It also helps that I am writing this and Kevin is the one who handles the tanks…)

Kevin handling a sewer tank hose

How do you “limit” water usage?

If we don’t have full hook ups at a campground, it means we need to move our entire RV to a central dumping site in order to drain our tanks. That is a giant pain, so we try to not waste room in the grey tank (there’s not much you can do about the black tank…) So, if I’m washing dishes, I turn the faucet off while soaping everything up and use a minimal stream of water to rinse. When showering, we have a toggle switch so we can get wet, turn the water off, lather up, turn the water back on to rinse, and repeat. I’ll hold off on washing laundry since the washer uses a ton of water. Additionally, when we are going to be staying at a place where we have to watch our water usage, before we arrive, we’ll cook up large quantities of easily reheatable food – soups, stews, chili, pasta, etc. That way, we’re not dirtying up tons of pots and pans when we’re trying to conserve water.

How is cooking in the RV?

Other than not having a regular oven and dishwasher, it’s pretty much the same as in the house. We have a convection microwave, so that creates a reasonable substitution for the full size oven, and our Instant Pot gets used all the time. Kevin grumbles about the propane grill (‘blah, blah, blah, it’s just un-American, blah blah blah,”) but it gets the job done, and when he has time, he can use his bullet smoker to slow cook meats.

Kevin with a bullet smoker and Dixie
Kevin with two of his favorite things: his puppy and his smoker.

What is your division of labor? Who does what?

(Note: This is the nice way of saying: “On your blog and Facebook, we always hear about what Kevin does. What the hell do you do all day? Sit around and eat bon bons??”)

Kevin: Drives the RV from location to location, handles the tanks, routes our trips (makes sure the GPS isn’t going to send us a stupid way), cooks, does routine maintenance on the RV, and kills bugs.

Laura: Drives the Xterra once we get to a location, cleans the inside of the RV, plans our trips (researches locations and campgrounds and books reservations), washes dishes and laundry, points out bugs that need killing.

Dixie: Rinses dishes, notifies pack of impending thunderstorms (more reliably than our weather radio, I might add), and justifies my decision to buy an expensive vacuum cleaner since she tracks in half the outdoors every. single. day.

Have you missed having more closet/storage space?

We have plenty of storage space, and if anything, we’ll probably get rid of some things that we haven’t been using.

Cabinet shelf with cook books.
If you’ve got room in your RV for Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” you’re doing pretty well.

Do you have any regrets about buying the RV you bought?

Not really. We can certainly see the appeal of some other layouts and models, but if we had it to do again, I don’t think we would make a different choice. We’ve been very happy with the layout we chose, the amount of storage space we have, and Tiffin’s willingness to stand behind their product. We were amazed how quickly Barney became “home” to us, especially after so many years of living in our house. And while there are certainly amenities we would love to have, we’d rather have the extra cash to spend on sightseeing and fun stuff rather than having sunk it into our RV.

Kevin and Laura standing in front of their RV
One year after our purchase, we’re still very happy.

What’s the worst thing about your RV?

The insulation sucks. Higher end motorhomes have heated floors and double pane windows. Heated floors might sound luxurious, but they are actually really helpful in an RV because the entire underside of a motorhome is exposed to the air. So when it gets cold, air swirls underneath and comes up from the floors. And the single pane windows we have are pretty worthless. When it’s cold, you can feel the air coming right through the windows. All of which is not that big of a deal if you successfully chase 70 degrees year round, but when you get stuck in say Massachusetts in November, it’s not good. The only way to heat the place at that point is to use your propane heater – which works wonders, but you burn through propane super quick and then have to move the entire RV to go refill the tank. Inconvenient on a good day, super problematic when one of you has a broken leg.

Do you both drive?

Kevin does the vast majority of driving (75%). I need to do more, but he’s gotten so good at it, that I hesitate to jump in and then crash Barney and ruin our whole day. It’s kind of a vicious circle: The more he drives, the better he gets, the less I want to crash Barney. But I’m only gonna gain confidence if I drive more. The other benefit for Kevin though is that I drive the Xterra whenever we get where we’re going, and we spend a LOT more time driving around in the Xterra than we do the motorhome. If we actually split the motorhome driving evenly, he might have to suck it up and drive the Xterra once in a while.

Dixie in the driver's seat of the motorhome
If only she could reach the pedals….

Are you gonna change anything in your second year?

We are working on slowing down even more. I was under the impression that spending a week at each stop would be the right amount of time, while Kevin always thought we’d want more. Turns out, he was right. We seem to routinely find ourselves wishing we had a few more days to explore the places we visit (the seemingly endless rainy weather this spring has not helped). So, going forward, we’ll be looking to significantly lengthen our stays at our various stops.

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Well, those are the questions that stuck in my mind as we visited with friends these past couple of weeks. If there’s anything I didn’t answer that you’re curious about, feel free to ask in the comments section below, or email us.

19 COMMENTS

    • Thanks! We are looking forward to getting up north and hoping for some good weather. Last I checked, the maritimes were still a tad chilly (like freezing cold), but hopefully things will start warming up soon! We’ll see if we can stomach any more seafood… I think we wore ourselves out on it last year. 🙂

    • The funny thing is, I thought we WERE traveling slow… little did I know how fast even that would seem. We’ll get this all figured out at some point!! In the meantime,we are very much looking forward to exploring Canada. Hopefully the weather gods will be agreeable!

  1. I’m so glad you guys are hitting Canada this year! We can pick your brains since we plan to do it next year. We’re especially interested in any dog and dog food issues (ie supposedly all dog food needs to stay in its original container), and internet usage in Canada. Then also interested in rules about food (into Canada and US). So you’ll definitely need to do a detailed blog about your strip search getting back into the US from Canada!

    Dixie sounds like Opie in that she’s loving all the extra attention and time, it has to be tough being the center of the universe. When our older dog, Max, had trouble getting into Rover, a nearby camper noticed and gave us a dog ramp (they were getting rid of). We left that propped on the stairs all the time and he would use it to get in/out of the coach (we would have about 2 inches of stairs on the side for us to use). A ramp could prob help Dixie. With Opie and his increased activity, his arthritis has definitely gotten worse. The glucosamine is great, but also try fish oil pills. He gets two in the morning and one at night and it helps to build up some of the ligaments in the areas around the joints (it takes some time to see it working). We really think the fish oil and glucosamine makes a big difference for him. Then he only needs the rimadyl after long hikes.

    Love reading about your progress, can’t believe it’s been 10 months! I swear every single RVer says the same thing about year 2…. gotta slow down more (including us).

    • I will definitely post about the logistics of traveling to and from Canada with the dog. It’s something I am about to start researching myself soon. I know lots of people do it, but it definitely seems kindof nerve wracking. No question – I will share what we learn! I’ll also let you know what we figure out about internet service. From the reviews I’ve read, most of the campgrounds we’re staying at have decent wifi, but we’ll still be calling Verizon to see about getting some sort of additional international plan so we have connectivity when we’re away from the RV.

      It’s funny, we actually give Dixie one fish oil pill every day because it helps her dry skin, but I wasn’t aware that it also helped with joints. Maybe we’ll start giving it to her twice a day…. And yeah, I can definitely see a ramp in her future. We’re just hoping to make it another year or two before we get there. The vet was very happy with her muscle tone and said the arthritis really isn’t that bad yet, so the main issue is just her confidence. If we can keep getting her to just go for it, she should be successful for a while.

  2. I’m with you on Justin Trudeau girl. All that hotness and he actually knows what he’s doing! Imagine that!

    • It helps that he speaks French too. Everything sounds more romantic when said in French. He could be talking about the Gross Domestic Product of Zimbabwe and I’d be all googly eyed as long as he was speaking in French. 🙂

  3. Great questions and answers! We’ve been traveling for 8 months now, and I was surprised at how quickly it felt normal and our trailer felt like home. My husband and I have nearly the same division of labor as you two, too!

    • I think it’s just more evidence of humans’ ability to adapt. I think we can get used to just about anything… and even when things are difficult, as long as we keep a positive mindset, we can get through that stuff too. It’s definitely boosted our confidence about succeeding in this little project, that’s for sure!

  4. Fun post. We’re in year four and still feel like we’re just getting started. We’re always trying to slow it down, but there’s soooo much to see and do! Like you, we adapted really well to our fulltime RV life. We’ve made good friends on the road, and still miss our friends at home, but we get to see them every year, and they meet up with us in our travels here and there. It’s a great life! Happy wandering! :-))

    • It is definitely a struggle. On the one hand, we know we’ll enjoy places more if we stay longer. On the other hand, we want to see EVERYTHING! I think it’s just gonna take time to figure out the perfect length of time, and we have to remember that certain places justify spending longer than others. Plus, we can balance out the super busy places with slower paced places and find balance there too. Anyway, it’s always nice to hear from people who’ve been on the road for a good long while and are still loving it!

  5. Great post! I love your sense of humor. We also travel slowly. In fact, we are starting a 10 month tour of Florida next month. We’ll stay at each spot 2-4 weeks. It should be a lot of fun.

    • Wow! That’s really cool! By the time you leave, you’ll actually be able to say you’ve truly experienced that state, instead of people like us who are constantly saying “we’ve got to get back there.” That’s a neat way to travel…and you’re probably much more relaxed than a lot of folks. Not to mention, it’s got to be more economical. Very smart.

  6. There is still a lot to learn and discover as you continue on your adventure. Even if we are on our sixth year of full timing, we are still learning new things and given your time frame slowing down may be a challenge 🙂
    This is a wonderful FAQ and pretty much of it we have experienced too.
    As a hint you may wished to check our Canada page if you are heading out to the Canadian Maritimes. One thing to know, the RV parks are nothing to write home about.
    Places I thought are worth a stop and exploring:
    St Andrews by the sea; Hopewell Cape (New Brunswick); https://lowestravels.com/category/canada/new-brunswick/
    Lunnenberg and Halifax and if willing to drive up further north, Cape Bretons Highlands (Nova Scotia); https://lowestravels.com/category/canada/nova-scotia/
    a must see Hostsetters Viewscape, French River (Prince Edward Island) If you like mussels, you can have them by a bucket! https://lowestravels.com/category/canada/prince-edward-island/
    Enjoy and have a great time at the Maritimes!

    • You’ll be happy to know I’ve been using your Canada posts as a guide to our travel plans! ( I’ve also actually been using your Vermont posts to plan for that stop as well) We are planning on going to all of these places you mention, and I avoided a couple of campgrounds based on Steve’s reviews… though you may be right – they might all kind of stink. Oh well… Hopefully the beautiful views and awesome seafood will make up for any less than stellar campgrounds. 🙂

  7. Your answers today will probably be different in a year or two, at least that is what we have found out. We have been fulltimers for over 4 years and are still loving it. We now think we like to stay in one spot for a month at a time. It sure saves money because you get such a break on a monthly rate, and it sure is fun watching everyone else pull in and pull out. I think we actually get to meet more people this way.

    • I’m sure you are totally right about how our feelings on many of these things will change. We’re really just figuring things out as we go along, and what seemed like a great idea a couple months back, oftentimes doesn’t seem so great later on. It definitely keeps things interesting, that’s for sure! As for the month-long stays, we would definitely like to do more of those, but we are also itching to see what there is to see, so we’re always trying to balance the different factors. We’ve got a couple really lengthy stays coming up, so I think that will be a good way to figure out what works best for us.

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